WASHINGTON — The White House is considering deep cuts to federal housing programs, including a sweeping overhaul of aid to low-income families, in a reconfiguration that could jeopardize millions of Americans’ continued access to rental assistance funds.

The potential changes primarily concern federal housing vouchers, including those more commonly known as Section 8. The aid generally helps the poorest tenants cover the monthly costs of apartments, town homes and single-family residences.

Focus on Housing Vouchers

Administration officials recently discussed cutting or canceling out the vouchers and other rental assistance programs and potentially replacing them with a more limited system of housing grants, perhaps sent to states, according to three people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the confidential discussions. The overhaul would be included in President Donald Trump’s new budget, which is expected to be sent to Capitol Hill in the coming weeks.

The exact design and cost of the retooled program is unclear, and any such change is likely to require approval from Congress, as White House budgets on their own do not carry the force of law.

But people familiar with the administration’s thinking said the expected overhaul would most likely amount to more than just a technical change, resulting in fewer federal dollars for low-income families on top of additional cuts planned for the rest of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. On Thursday, the Trump administration took the first steps toward potentially selling the agency’s headquarters in Washington.

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Budget Cuts and Agency Impact

Federal voucher programs currently provide assistance to about 2.3 million low-income families, according to the government’s estimates, who enroll through their local public-housing authorities. The aid is part of a broader universe of rental assistance programs that are set to exceed $54 billion this fiscal year. But the annual demand for these subsidies is far greater than the available funds, creating a sizable waitlist as rents are rising nationally.

“If there were a cut to the voucher program, essentially, you would see a decrease to the number of families that are served by the program,” said Eric Oberdorfer, director of policy and legislative affairs at the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials, an advocacy group.

At the moment, he added, only 1 in 4 families eligible for vouchers are able to obtain them because of funding constraints. A federal cut would put public-housing agencies in a position in which “they would need to make difficult decisions” and in some cases stop providing benefits, Oberdorfer said.

Rachel Cauley, a spokesperson for the White House budget office, said in a statement that “no final funding decisions have been made.”

Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, previously endorsed an end to the federal voucher program. He wrote in 2022 that the Section 8 program in particular “brings with it crime, decreased property values, and results in dependency and subsidized irresponsibility.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Housing and Urban Development declined to comment on the budget. Appearing on Capitol Hill earlier this year, Scott Turner, the housing secretary, told senators that he believed the goal of the voucher program was to “get people into self sustainability,” not “a lifetime on subsidies.”

The expected cuts to rental assistance reflect Trump’s broader desire to shrink the footprint of government and its reach into Americans’ lives, a project that includes sharp reductions to federal antipoverty programs viewed as too generous or wasteful.

The aggressive campaign has already resulted in the president and his top aides — including tech billionaire Elon Musk — shuttering entire agencies, freezing billions of dollars and dismissing thousands of civil employees, moves that have enraged Democrats and led to a series of court challenges.

The full scope of Trump’s vision stands to become clearer once he submits his budget to Congress this spring, reflecting his priorities for the 2026 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. The proposal is expected to guide Republican lawmakers as they look for ways to pay for the party’s costly ambitions to reduce taxes on people and corporations.

Many agencies, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development, could lose funds ranging into the billions of dollars, according to those familiar with the White House blueprint, who cautioned that it remained unfinished.

The cuts to housing programs come in addition to an exodus of the agency’s workforce. As of last week, about 2,300 employees opted to accept an offer for “deferred resignation” and leave their jobs, according to two people familiar with the matter.

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Broader Housing Agency Changes

The White House also plans to dismantle a key office in the housing agency that helps communities recover from deadly natural disasters, a move that could slow much-needed emergency aid. Separately, Trump issued an executive order last month eliminating a decades-old, governmentwide commission meant to coordinate the federal response to homelessness.

A potential overhaul of the housing agency comes on the heels of a congressional deal to fund the government through September that increased some housing spending yet did not keep pace with rising rents and the growing demand for federal aid. The funding gap could result in about 32,000 voucher recipients soon losing access to federal housing aid, according to Democrats’ estimates, on top of additional cuts once funding runs out in a pandemic-era program that expanded voucher availability.

Many of the foundational changes the White House contemplates for the housing department are consistent with cuts that the president and Vought, his returning budget chief, previously endorsed. In the final budget of Trump’s first term, the two men proposed a roughly $8.6 billion reduction at the housing agency, though they did not propose to eliminate vouchers entirely.

Years after leaving government, though, Vought specifically proposed a full end to the Section 8 voucher program. At his conservative nonprofit, the Center for Renewing America, Vought in 2022 called vouchers supplied to low-income tenants a “hook for implementing the left’s fair housing agenda,” faulting the government for focusing on racial equity.

Vought previously served as a key author of Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for the Trump presidency, which similarly endorsed a sweeping overhaul to federal housing spending. Ben Carson, who led the Department of Housing and Urban Development during Trump’s first term, wrote in a chapter about the agency that it needed to explore significant reforms to the voucher program, such as work requirements on recipients and limits to how long they could collect housing aid.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Tony Romm/Eric Lee
c. 2025 The New York Times Company